Seven weeks after his death, the Ontario/Chaffey Community Show Band is paying homage Monday to founding director Jack Mercer with a tribute concert — one that Mercer helped plan.

Well, Mercer, who died Aug. 26 at age 91, was a consummate showman. He could hardly have resisted the urge to have a hand in his own tribute.

He taught music at Chaffey High School and in retirement led the Show Band, giving him more than 50 years of music-making in Ontario. He left the Show Band in 2013 in the hands of his right-hand man, Gabe Petrocelli, but stayed involved.

Petrocelli got a call right after the band’s Fourth of July performance. “I have something to discuss with you,” Mercer said, as he always did, leaving it to his friend to wonder about the topic.

When Petrocelli sat down in Mercer’s Ontario home, Mercer said, “I want to talk to you about ‘Mercer’s Last Razzle-Dazzle.’” He handed over a piece of paper printed out from his computer.

This being Mercer, a notoriously poor speller, the heading was “Mercer’s Last Razzel Dazzel.”

Under that was typed “Outline of show.” He noted that it should take place at Gardiner W. Spring Auditorium at Chaffey High, the band’s home. He chose five songs and the five vocalists he wanted to sing them. And he named five instrumentals for the band to perform.

A surprised Petrocelli, who thought Mercer was being premature, said he’d be happy to put together such a concert for Mercer’s 100th birthday. They talked about the show as Petrocelli scribbled notes on the paper.

Other songs occurred to them: “Stardust,” “Over the Rainbow.” The title “Love is a Mighty” turned out to mean “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing,” which Petrocelli duly corrected.

Mercer was given a task. “Jack: Write a letter,” a note reads.

Petrocelli folded the paper, took it home and left it in his office. He didn’t take it seriously because Mercer still seemed healthy.

Then Mercer died of congestive heart failure.

“The day after he passed, I was desperately looking for this,” Petrocelli told me Monday, holding the paper in his hand. “I tore my office apart until I found it. I didn’t think we’d need it.”

October’s concert, the first of the season in Gardiner Spring, had been set to focus on Halloween music. That went out the window.

Instead, Petrocelli began contacting singers and players about the memorial concert. It takes place at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the auditorium, 1245 N. Euclid Ave. in Ontario. Admission is free.

Show Band attendance averages 500 but Petrocelli thinks this one may approach 1,000.

We met last Monday in the auditorium as the Show Band gathered to rehearse the concert. Petrocelli showed me the notes.

“We took this scrap of paper,” Petrocelli said, “and tried to put together an entire show.”

What was Mercer’s attitude as they discussed the show back in July?

“Very upbeat,” Petrocelli said. “He felt proud of the fact that he was designing his own last show.”

We looked over the list of titles.

“A lot of these tunes were his favorites, and a lot of them we played together, him on trumpet and me on piano, at Kiwanis and other places,” Petrocelli recalled.

Others, such as “Deep Purple” and “You Made Me Love You,” were important to Mercer and his wife of 68 years, Jane, who will take part in Monday’s tribute.

So will musicians who aren’t part of the 55-member Show Band. An invitation went out to musicians who knew Mercer to sit in. Some 25 will join the Show Band, most of them from another community band, the Pomona Concert Band, including conductor Linda Taylor and assistant conductor Jorge Garcia.

The participation is out of respect, Taylor said during a break in the rehearsal.

“He’s been an icon as long as I can remember,” said Taylor, who taught in Baldwin Park when Mercer was at Chaffey. “You associate him with quality stuff.” She’ll play clarinet.

Vocalist Jim Bonner ran through “Blue Skies” with the band.

Why that song?

“He picked me,” Bonner said afterward of Mercer. “This is my first time singing it. When I joined the band four or five years ago, he and Jane would call me The Voice. Songs that he liked, he’d say, ‘I want Jim to do it.’”

Trumpet player Larry Carriato, a Show Band member and former Mercer student, will perform “A Flash of Light,” which Mercer composed as his master’s thesis in the 1940s.

“When the man who taught you asks you to play something he wrote, it’s an honor,” Carriato said.

During that solo, a 1940s photo of Jack with his trumpet will be projected. “And we’ll have Jack’s trumpet on a chair, and a spotlight on it,” said Arlene Blanchard, who’ll narrate the show with Gary Ovitt. “It’ll be a real tearjerker moment.”

There’ll likely be several of those, even if the rehearsal gave little evidence of it. Songs were run through briskly at Petrocelli’s direction, with portions repeated as necessary.

“I expect the concert to be emotional. They’ll talk about the songs and what they meant to Jack. Because he picked them,” said Crystal Leonard, who’s played flute with the band for most of its existence.

Petrocelli said he did his best to stick to Mercer’s instructions. He even stuck with Mercer’s off-kilter spelling for the concert’s title, “Mercer’s Last Razzel Dazzel” — “you might pronounce it ‘ruh-ZEL duh-ZEL,’” Petrocelli joked — because the error had Mercer’s stamp on it.

“I didn’t want to change it. It was very symbolic the way it was. Something would be lost,” Petrocelli explained.

One instruction could not be followed.

“Jack was supposed to write a letter that he wanted to have read,” Petrocelli said. “He never got around to that.”

Since 1997, David Allen has been taking up valuable newsprint and pixels at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he is a columnist and blogger (insidesocal.com/davidallen). Among his specialties: city council meetings, arts and culture, people, places, local history, dining and a log in a field that resembled the Loch Ness monster. The Illinois native has spent his newspaper career in California, starting in 1987 at the Santa Rosa News-Herald and continuing at the Rohnert Park-Cotati Clarion, Petaluma Argus-Courier and Victor Valley Daily Press. A resident of Claremont who roots for the St. Louis Cardinals and knows far too much about Marvel Comics, the Kinks and Frank Zappa's Inland Valley years, he is the author of two collections of columns: "Pomona A to Z" and "Getting Started."

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